Space Missions

Israel’s SpaceIL has announced that it will launch its Moon probe on a SpaceX launch vehicle, to land in February 2019. If successful, the SpaceIL lunar mission will make Israel the fourth-ever country to land on the Moon, after the Soviet Union, U.S., and China. SpaceIL unmanned Tuesday at a …

Astroscale has reached a key milestone in its quest to develop space debris removal services in order to secure long-term spaceflight and sustainability. The company has established a ground station in Totsuka, Yokohama for sending and receiving satellite data. This is the first ground station that the company has constructed …

The United Arab Emirates has progressed to the last 39 Emirati men and women who are in line to be selected as the nation’s first astronauts, one of whom will be launched to the International Space Station (ISS) from Russia next year. More than 4000 men and women applied to …

Federal State Unitary Enterprise Experimental Design Bureau FAKEL (hereafter referred to as EDB Fakel) is one of the leading companies in Russia and in the world, having a 55-year experience in development of Electric Propulsion Systems (EPS), and more than a 40-year flight experience in Electric Propulsion Subsystems based on …

The UAE has announced that its first astronaut will be launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2019 with the assistance of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos. This confirms rumours circulating last month about the possibility of the UAE’s first astronaut being sent into orbit in 2019, despite the …

by Dmitry Oliferovich, Editor SpaceWatch Russia&CIS Last month ex-deputy prime minister of Russia Dmitry Rogozin was appointed Director General the Roscosmos Corporation by Vladimir Putin, replacing Igor Komarov, who had headed the agency since 2015. Mr. Rogozin has overseen Russia’s space industry since 2011. He was placed under US sanctions …

The Yuzhnoye Design Office continues its collaboration with Orbital ATK on the production and launch of the Antares launch vehicle. The area of responsibility of the Ukrainian enterprise is the hardware for the rocket’s first stage. The Orbital ATK Antares rocket carrying the Cygnus automated cargo spacecraft was successfully launched …

Russia has invited Turkey to send a Turkish national for Cosmonaut training, indicating that the relationship between these countries may now bear the substantial weight of ongoing human spaceflight cooperation obligations, despite difficulties on a number of issues, including Syria and the Armenia-Azerbaijani dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh. “If Turkey wants to …

Diplomatic efforts are gathering in the Middle East and North Africa toward the development of a regional mechanism for space cooperation and development among Arab countries. At the recent Global Aerospace Summit in Abu Dhabi, the region made progress toward  establishing an Arab space organisation. “In spite of our advanced …

India has solidified its space cooperation relationships in Southeast Asia, and called for rules-based order throughout the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) – to include space – during visits to Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi this past week. Speaking at the annual international security conference sponsored …